Number 201: APRIL 2011 - Wagner Society of England

Number 201: April 2011

INSIDE
Number 201: APRIL 2011
4 Chairman’s Retiring Letter
5 From the Chair-Elect
6 Die Walküre cinema relay from La Scala Milan
10 Parsifal study day with Ian Beresford Gleaves
11 Tannhäuser at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
16 “Donald McIntyre – Colossus from New Zealand” The Paul Dawson-Bowling
Lecture
17 “Backstage at Bayreuth”: an evening with James Rutherford
18 “Living in Exile”: The Mastersingers Aldeburgh Programme
20 Parsifal at English National Opera
29 Lance Ryan and Christian Thielemann at Bayreuth
30 DVD review: “Wagner and Me” by Stephen Fry
33 Book review: “Richard Wagner and the Centrality of Love” by Barry Emslie
36 Letters
38 Farewell to...
39 Wagner Society Contacts
CONTRIBUTORS
The relay from La Scala presented Katie Barnes with “the squalliest and most ill-tuned
bunch of Valkyries” she has ever heard, but at the Royal Opera House she found the
voice of Christian Gerhaher to be “like a rich silk scarf sliding slowly to the ground”.
(See: Stop Press on page 38) katie_barnes_unicorn@msn.com
Philip Morgan was converted to Wagner while listening to Karajan’s Die Meistersinger
on an old set of vinyls in 1992. pbmorgan@btopenworld.com
As a schoolboy in 1958 Paul Dawson-Bowling cycled across Europe to Bayreuth to see
Der Ring, Tristan, Die Meistersinger, and Parsifal. paulizdb@talktalk.net
A Society member for 37 years, Robert Mitchell is a Yorkshire GP whose interest in
Wagner was ignited when he attended Götterdämmerung at Covent Garden in 1963.
drrgm@hotmail.co.uk
Chris Argent is Editor of the Richard Strauss Society Newsletter. He took over his
stepfather’s membership of the Wagner Society upon his death in 1986 (“he and my
mother drilled me into tolerating Wagner”) and has being writing for Wagner News ever
since. chris.argent@ntlworld.com
Cover: Sir Donald McIntyre: See report on page 16
Photo: Peter West donningtonart@aol.com 01256 222 339
Designed & Printed by Rap Spiderweb – www.rapspiderweb.com 0161 947 3700
–2–

EDITOR’S NOTE
WRITE FOR WAGNER NEWS!
Editing Wagner News is a job to be envied by anyone who would enjoy engaging
with a group of very talented and dedicated contributors. We are blessed with volunteer
writers and a photographer who produce work of the highest standards for this magazine.
Those who make up this well-established and elite squad are small in number.
Their response to the demands which we make of them can often be described as heroic.
Although this does not compromise the quality of their work, excessively exploiting their
goodwill may not be the best way to assure the future development of Wagner News.
Such expertise can be all too intimidating for readers who might be considering
the idea of contributing to this publication themselves. You may also regard the fact that
you have not yet been asked to do so as another inhibiting factor.
Few of us could hope to match the experience and ability of those upon whose
efforts we have depended year after year. As well as their comprehensive “big” pieces
there is also room for reports and comments from others who may also have something
to tell our readers. To complement the “conventional” material which appears in these
pages ideas and information are also welcome from those who may not have tried their
hand at writing for us before, or who may not have done so for some time.
It’s your Wagner News, and so I would be delighted to receive your thoughts. I am
looking for potential writers who can be encouraged to venture forth and join the team.
My knowledge of who might be available is necessarily limited, so please don’t wait to
be asked: I enjoy the surprise of receiving unsolicited items!
Even very short observations can find a place in the scheme of things being put
together for our readers. Pictures are also most welcome as it is simply not possible for
our photographer to turn out for all of the events which we cover. We also need proof
readers who are able to work via email.
Let’s get down to business and start with the sumptuous programme which
Malcolm Rivers has put together for The Mastersingers weekend in Aldeburgh (see:
centre pages). With no fewer than nine events to cover, I would be very interested to hear
from anyone attending these who might feel able to lend a hand in reporting them for
Wagner News.
Similarly, our readers deserve to share the impressions of those fortunate enough
to see Die Meistersinger at Glyndebourne, Tristan und Isolde at Grange Park, Opera
North’s Das Rheingold or the Hallé’s Die Walküre at the Bridgewater Hall. So please let
me know!
Roger Lee
penmaenmawr@hotmail.com
–3–

THE CHAIRMAN’S RETIRING LETTER TO MEMBERS
Dear Members,
It is now time to move forward with a new Wagner News Editor, a new Treasurer,
a new Secretary and a new Chairman.
In a previous letter I explained to you that, now that all the monies were safely
back in the Society accounts, it is necessary for me to concentrate on my work for the
Young Artists programmes for both The Mastersingers and the Wagner Society.
We are all very fortunate to be able to call upon our new personnel from within
the strength of our membership ranks. I am sure that you will all join me in wishing them
many years of successful work on behalf of members. All are very adept in their roles,
particularly Jeremy Rowe, whose academic and musical skills allied to a very diplomatic
demeanour will be a great asset to us all.
We have been most fortunate of all in these recent times to have had David Waters
in the position of Secretary. I can assure you that without his consummate skills and
unceasing energies on our behalf we may still have been in a very sorry state financially.
By following the guidelines of the Charity Commission and then of the police he ensured
the safety of the Society.
News has just arrived of a further bequest to the Society of £11,000. More details
on this will be furnished by our new and excellent Treasurer Mike Morgan.
Before I hand over to Jeremy I can tell you that he and I have had long discussions
on the way forward, and we have planned exciting projects and events for you over the
coming years. What will most notably be maintained are the Live Artists projects such as
the Aldeburgh event, the Rehearsal Orchestra Programme and the Bayreuth Bursary Day.
These will all be in collaboration with The Mastersingers.
The biggest events we are planning are for the May 2013 Bicentennial
celebrations. The Mastersingers Company will be responsible for providing all of the
major projects other than Jeremy Rowe’s Bicentennial Dinner during that year’s special
week as well as events for a full year thereafter. This all culminates in more celebrations
during May 2014 to close the year. You will not be disappointed.
I hope to see many of you at Aldeburgh in May. (See: centre pages.) Do please
approach me with any ideas that you may wish me to propose to the new committee team.
In conclusion I would like to thank you all for your support and loyalty over the
three years of my Chairmanship. It was most appreciated.
Malcolm Rivers
malcolmpk@rivers44.fsnet.co.uk
–4–

FROM THE CHAIR-ELECT
There have been a number of questions recently about ways in which members of
the Society can communicate with the committee. As Chair-elect, I am clear that I should
be available at any time, and thus you will find my home address, home phone number
and personal e-mail in this edition of Wagner News, although work commitments do not
always allow me to respond to messages on the day I receive them.
I am happy for me to be your first point of contact with the committee. The
contacts page in this magazine shows other ways of contacting other committee members,
usually by email. If you do not have email, please call or write to me first.
Recent resignations have left our committee somewhat depleted, and currently we
are especially anxious to recruit a new Secretary. This is a very busy and important
position to hold on the committee, and suitable only for someone who lives in London,
can attend almost every meeting, and is computer literate, as most of the committee
business is conducted electronically. If anyone is interested, please contact me, and we
should meet to discuss the job.
After the excitement of the opening night of ENO’s Parsifal, we were apprehensive
about going to the opening in Barcelona of the Liceu’s new Parsifal only a week later.
Could any other singer match Sir John Tomlinson’s wonderful Gurnemanz? Surprisingly,
the answer was ‘yes’ in the shape of Eric Halfvarson, who seemed to us to be very much
in the same mould as Sir John. Christopher Ventris was a strong physical presence on the
stage, and we were much surprised by the ending, when Klingsor (Boaz Daniel)
embraced Titurel (Ante Jerkunica) as the final curtain fell on this post-First World War
production by Claus Guth.
Our recent SGM was extremely well attended, and the capacity crowd remained to
hear James Rutherford’s talk. It reminds us all why the Society is important when we hear
a ‘young’ singer like James pay tribute to the assistance he has received from both
Mastersingers and the Wagner Society.
Accounts for 2009 (as seen by members at the meeting on 15th February) will be
sent to all members shortly. I am now able to announce that the Annual General Meeting
will take place on Tuesday 7th June.
Finally may I inform you that I shall be presenting “An evening with Lotte
Lehmann”, featuring her farewell performance, a masterclass, and an interview with her,
on Wednesday 6th July at Portland Place Sixth Form Centre in Great Portland Street: wine
at 7.00pm, presentation at 7.30pm.
Jeremy D Rowe
lyceumschool@aol.com
–5– – 5–

DIE WALKÜRE: “A RICH TAPESTRY OF GLORIOUS SOUND”
Review by Katie Barnes of the live relay from La Scala, Milan on 7th December 2010
I feel that there is always a disadvantage in reviewing a live stage performance on
screen, as I have had to do with this cinema relay. The audience in the theatre can see
everything that the producer has laid before them, and can assess it all for themselves. The
cinema audience is obliged to focus upon the elements which the camera gives them. This
was a particular disadvantage on this occasion, where the cinema version frequently
concentrated upon scenic elements which I, for one, would probably have chosen to ignore
in the theatre.
I lost count of the number of times during Act II when the camera was snatched
away from the singers, often at crucial moments, for lengthy shots of the huge, spinning
globe which dominated the stage, upon which various video images were projected in the
course of the action (and which made me feel seasick). At other times, the camera dwelt
upon huge video projections (designed by Arjen Klerkx and Kurt D’Haeseleer) which
may have looked splendid onstage, but did not always make much sense on the screen. I
had the impression that many of the video effects would have been very confusing to the
audience in the theatre, because they would dwarf the singers and distract attention from
them. It was a pity that some scenes were so dimly lit, to the extent that it was almost
impossible to detect the singers. This was especially unfortunate when Siegmund was in
darkness as he sang his first lines and when he drew Notung from the tree. It was also a
pity that the surtitles appeared to be made up on the spur of the moment and were often
unintentionally risible – Notung was called “Needy”, Fricka ordered Wotan “Hands off
Siegmund”, and Brunnhilde promised Siegmund that in Valhalla he would be welcomed
by “dead heroes in a splendid body”.
Nonetheless, from the cinema relay it was clear that much of the production was
very impressive. Hunding’s house in Act I was formed by two large white screens placed
together with a point at the front of the stage onto which were projected drawn black and
white images of a Victorian room with a cheery golden fire blazing on the hearth. Two
larger screens with images of huge, gnarled trees enclosed the house, one with Notung in
its trunk off to one side. Later the projected images varied, and during much of the love
scene the screens were blank until, at the beginning of Winterstürme, they slowly opened
to reveal a forest made from tall spears. The first appearances of Siegmund and Hunding,
both entering with their silhouettes projected upon the screens, were particularly effective,
and later Sieglinde was seen in silhouette, drugging Hunding’s drink.
In an interview shown during the first interval Cassini explained that the first act
was staged in this way because Hunding’s world is two-dimensional: he plays by the rules
but uses them to his advantage. Wotan’s world is also two-dimensional: he has tunnel
vision because he has only one eye. The gods are a dysfunctional family who have
forgotten how to find balance between their emotions, feelings and ideals. Their world
within Valhalla is as claustrophobic as Hunding’s.
The setting for the opening scene of Act II was as solid as that for Act I had been
insubstantial. Wotan and Brünnhilde were discovered standing at the foot of a massive
statue of several rearing horses dominated by the aforementioned spinning globe, with
green lightning flickering all around and green trees projected behind. Later the Wälsungs
fled among a forest of standing spears upon which numbers, symbols and tree images
were projected and amid which the final showdown and Siegmund’s death took place.
–6– – 6–

During the Ride of the Valkyries the
audience saw a huge slow-motion projection of
writhing figures including women with long,
flying hair overlaid by the image of a rearing
horse. In front of the projection screen stood a
collection of square pillars of various heights
representing the rocks over which the Valkyries
leapt and clambered. Two aerial artists swung
through the air behind the screen. Later the
forest of spears returned to create a more
intimate setting for the Wotan/Brünnhilde
scene. The ending gave rise to a most beautiful
visual effect. Brünnhilde was laid to sleep, not
lying supine as usual, but curled up like a kitten
with the long train of her dress gathered around
her. During the Magic Fire music the rock upon
which she lay rose to become a substantial
pillar and shaded lamps descended from the
flies to bathe her in red light while more spears,
also glowing red, descended from above to Photo: Teatro alla Scala
fence her in. It was an unforgettable image.
Tim van Steenbergen’s elaborate costumes were generally Victorian in feel. In the
interview Cassini explained that this was because Europe is re-forming itself now in
much the same way as it did in Wagner’s time. He also explained that he sees the Ring as
a conflict between natural elements such as the Rheingold and the waters of the Rhine,
and those produced by man, such as the metal of the sword. Between nature and society
comes virtualisation and we live in a virtual world, hence the extensive use of videos. He
indicated that his production is made up of musical, visual and dramatic elements which
he gives to the spectator to form a gesamtkunstwerk in their minds. At the end of the
interview he appealed to viewers to: “Open up your senses. Look at what is offered to you
and see what it does for you.”
To me this is something of a poisoned chalice. While there is something flattering in
crediting the audience with the intelligence to make what they will of the production rather
than being told what to think, there is a danger that such a production style can become
merely ‘lazy’, throwing a variety of ingredients into the mix without any clear overall plan.
Personally I found some of Cassini’s visual elements breathtaking, others distracting, others
plain annoying, and others baffling – which was probably more or less what he intended –
but what I could see on the film suggested that I might have liked it less if I had seen it
onstage. The litmus test for me was how he directed the performers. The cast was a
judicious mix of singers who were experienced in their roles and those who were singing
them for the first or second time. Of the newcomers among the leading six, two seemed
uneasy onstage, which suggested to me that they may have been under-directed.
Vitalij Kovaljow (who sang Wotan in trying circumstances with San Francisco
Opera last year) replaced the originally announced René Pape at a late stage. He sang well,
with some truly beautiful tones in the voice in his Act II narrative and in the Farewell, but
he made little of the text and did not always convince me that he knew what each word he
sang really meant. Dramatically he was underwhelming. He cut a commanding figure
–7– – 7–

onstage but made little of his considerable stature and skulked around mournfully without
exploring the immense depth, complexity, passion, violence, tenderness and tragedy of
the character. This was a one-note Wotan. He was not helped by a wig which made him
look like an escaped black sheepskin rug.
Photo: Teatro alla Scala
Similarly, Ekaterina Gubanova sang an impressive if hard-voiced Fricka, but
seemed content to stride about the stage pontificating about her rights without appearing
to have the least emotional connection to her erring lord. To be fair, her massive hooped
skirt made physical contact out of the question, but when I recalled the intense
relationship which James Rutherford and Magdalen Ashman had conjured up in a concert
environment at the Henry Wood Hall a couple of months previously, I felt that the
Rehearsal Orchestra had scored over La Scala.
By contrast Nina Stemme made it impossible to believe that she was singing her
first Brünnhilde and making her house debut. She was already completely inside the
character, breathing and living it to such an extent that she could have been playing it for
years. This was a celestial performance which, like her Isolde at Covent Garden,
completely bowled me over. As with her Isolde, this is a lyric Brünnhilde, more in the
tradition of Anne Evans than the powerhouses of the past such as Nilsson or Flagstad, and
I suspect that in a large theatre the voice may sound a shade small for the role. But she
sang it with the same fine-spun grace and confidence that she would give to Mozart, and
the creamy-toned voice sounded perfectly focused, as though the slightest sound would
instantly hit the back wall of the theatre. Dramatically, as always, she was utterly
compelling, especially in the intensely moving Todesverkundigüng. She even triumphed
over her impossibly ugly costume, a long black ballgown with its train bunched up in an
–8– – 8–

ungainly bustle to reveal black riding boots, with a black greatcoat which, mercifully,
Wotan took from her before their Act III scene. Unfortunately her sister Valkyries were
the squalliest and most ill-tuned bunch I have ever heard, perhaps because the production
required them to risk life and limb leaping around the perilous set swinging their trains
out of the way and singing at the same time.
Simon O’Neill as Siegmund was also making his house debut. He created a
positive, likeable character, but sounded vocally patchy all through the performance, and
I later learned that he had been unwell during rehearsals. (At the second performance he
was replaced by the promising Dutch tenor, Frank van Aken). He sounded terrific at first,
especially in his Act I narrative and Ein Schwert verhiess mir der Vater, in which his cries
of “Wälse!” made my hair stand on end. But Winterstürme sounded hoarse and unlovely
before he recovered to finish the Act strongly. In his first scenes in Act II he again
sounded uneasy (probably because he had little left to sing and could afford to take a few
risks) before he sang a beautifully lyrical Zauberfest, and his final defiance of Hunding
rang clear and true.
Waltraud Meier had also been unwell, and the dress rehearsal had been closed due
to her ill-health. In this performance there was the occasional vocal raw patch and uneven
high note, but for me nothing could dim the pleasure of seeing her matchless portrayal at
close quarters. As I observed when reviewing the Royal Opera’s Prom performance in
2005, she is Sieglinde. A downtrodden woman who had almost lost hope blazed into
intense life before our eyes, burning with a rapture so fierce that it seemed almost
impossible to endure. The shining wonder with which she gazed into Siegmund’s eyes
said more for Wagner’s creation than any amount of complex staging, and amid a
production which would have impoverished the Royal Opera House for six months
nothing meant more than the moment when she cradled the two pieces of broken sword
in her arms as though they were the child that she was to bear. For the audience, knowing
that Sieglinde is to die in childbirth, that moment was unspeakably moving.
It cannot be easy for a Wotan to take the stage when John Tomlinson is elsewhere
in the cast. His towering Hunding had all the mighty stature and charisma which
Kovaljow lacked, so that when they met at last it was hard to remember which was meant
to be the god and which the presumptuous mortal, and his voice rang out as arrestingly
as ever. One could tell from his bearing that this Hunding was not merely the local bully
but a man of standing, respected in his community, who was entitled to expect assistance
from his friends and neighbours when he had been wronged. But from the instant when
he was seen as a looming shadow behind the screens he exuded menace, and the moment
when he made to strike Sieglinde was terrifying.
But the hero of the evening was, of course, Daniel Barenboim, presiding over a
Ring 22 years after his legendary collaboration with Harry Kupfer at Bayreuth. He
opened the proceedings with an impassioned speech against Government cuts in arts
funding and followed it with a performance of this score, which he knows so well, full of
depth, passion, urgency, tragedy and ecstasy. He took daring risks with tempi which let
the music breathe but risked letting it drag, yet making his every decision sound right.
The La Scala orchestra played for him as though they were a single person, creating a rich
tapestry of glorious sound. It was the music, not the production, which made this
performance unforgettable.
–9– – 9–

STUDY DAY ON PARSIFAL
Report by Philip Morgan
We awaited this day with eager anticipation, and were informed and entertained by
Ian Beresford Gleaves’ presentation on 15th January, timed in anticipation of the revival
at the ENO. Members of the committee had prepared for a full house in what must have
begun life as an elegant first floor drawing room, now converted into a classroom with
more or less zany posters and photographs on the walls.
Immediately IBG (if I may address him so) got down to the fascinating business
of the plan of Parsifal with THE KISS in the centre of it all, and the implications of the
various keys and key relationships which Wagner built into his score with such care. A
musical diagram of each act was very helpful in showing these, together with the parallels
between Acts I and III, and we began to pick up all sorts of new connections as we heard
his expert exposition.
With a Christian background, this reviewer found it interesting that IBG saw so
much Christian theology in the work. Readers will be aware of a wide variety of views
on this matter. (For example see Mike Ashman in the ENO/ROH Opera Guide for the
contrary view that when the myth came to Wolfram the influence of church and state was
beginning to affect the retelling of it and therefore the Christian content is entirely
secondary to the main story.)
In view of the time available IBG could use illustrations from the opera only
sparingly, but we benefited a great deal from his expertise at the piano in emphasising
themes and chords. We found his list of 23 motives – in chronological order – easier to
assimilate than Lionel Friend’s 69 in the Opera Guide. The recording IBG used was
Karajan’s of the early 1980s, with Kurt Moll, Peter Hoffmann and Dunja Vejzovic. Our
thanks to all who made this notable day possible, particularly, of course, to Ian Beresford
Gleaves himself.
Photo: David Waters
SIEGFRIED DAY SCHOOL
Broadway, The Cotswolds, 9th July
Ian Beresford-Gleaves will illustrate his examination of the musical and
dramatic structures in this work at the piano and from CDs. The day is intended as
preparation for the performances which will take place at Longborough on 25th, 28th
and 30th July.
The venue is Farncombe Estate Centre, Broadway, WR12 7LJ. Tel 01386
854100. www.FarncombeEstate.co.uk. Day School price: £70.
– 10 –

WOLFRAM WAS THE STAR OF THE EVENING
Review by Katie Barnes of Tannhäuser at the Royal Opera House,
Covent Garden on 22nd December 2010
Coincidentally this was the second production in a row at Covent Garden to use
the concept of a theatre within a theatre. David McVicar’s brilliant production of Adriana
Lecouvreur in November used a beautiful, detailed set inspired by the Markgräfliches
Opernhaus in Bayreuth, beloved of generations of Wagner Festival goers. Tim Albery’s
production of Tannhäuser takes the Royal Opera House itself as its basis. The link
between the theatre and Tannhäuser is more tenuous than that for Adriana in which an
actress is the heroine and part of the action is set backstage.
During the Prelude a pale light spreads over the curtain which then rises to show
the stage in darkness. Gradually we can discern the figure of Tannhäuser sitting in a chair
in the down left corner, facing upstage. Elisabeth appears upstage wearing a dark, fulllength
coat over her white dress with a scarf covering her bright hair. She smiles at
Tannhäuser and holds out her hand to him, but he looks away in shame and she bows her
head in despair. A smaller version of the Royal Opera House proscenium and curtain are
flown in, concealing her from sight. A few seconds later the curtain rises, showing the
woman in the coat with her back to the audience, but when she turns to face us it is Venus,
who seductively removes the coat and scarf to reveal herself in an off-the-shoulder black
evening dress. (This is a nice touch. If the two roles are not doubled a device like this is
a good way to show Tannhäuser’s confusion between the pure and the profane).
She disappears inside the curtains and six dancers, wearing replicas of her dress,
emerge. They circle Tannhäuser and lead him inside the curtains. One by one a series of
young men dressed like him sit in the chair and are lured inside the curtains. On this
showing the Venusberg has as high a success rate as Klingsor’s magic garden in seducing
young knights from the path of righteousness.
A long table is pushed out between the curtains and is used as the centrepiece for
the ballet and the subsequent scene between Tannhäuser and Venus. The Venusberg ballet
is always hard to present convincingly. The mythological scenes prescribed by Wagner
would not be sufficient nowadays to persuade the audience of the seductive nature of the
place, and modern dance does not always seem to me to be appropriate. Members of the
audience sitting around me liked the choreography, but to me the dancers’ endless chases
around and across the table, the stripping off of clothes and the gyrations conveyed the
depravity of the Venusberg without showing us its allure, or why Tannhäuser (or any other
of Venus’ captives) would want to stay there.
Venus herself arises from the depths of the stage, not in the shell prescribed by
Botticelli, but reclining upon a red velvet chaise-longue. She is well past the first flush
of youth, no longer an ageless goddess but a vulnerable, rapacious, increasingly desperate
woman who uses cajolery, scorn and emotional blackmail to try to win her wandering
lover back. I found little allure in what is surely meant to be the most seductive character
in all opera, and there was scant sense of the relationship which has kept Tannhäuser in
thrall for so long.
– 11 –

Distractingly during the duet the platform forming the stage-within-a-stage rises
up and down for no easily discernible reason, and when Tannhäuser invokes the Madonna
the inner stage, with Venus and her chaise-longue on it, descends, leaving him on the
forestage. Unfortunately, although she sinks from the view of the stalls, the Amphitheatre
can still see the singer creep away. Albery should have spent less time playing with the
stage machinery and taken greater care with his sightlines.
The descent of the platform leaves a huge void in the centre of the stage, from
which a single green tree arises with the Shepherd Boy sitting beneath it, singing his
song. Unfortunately the sight of one tree in the grey and black abyss is not really enough
to convey the intense contrast between the underground, artificial environment of the
Venusberg which Tannhäuser has just left and the open air, bright sky and fresh, springlike
atmosphere of the world above.
The Pilgrims’ voices are heard issuing from the void. Their chorus sounds
incredibly beautiful but the scene has a curiously ghostly air as they pass by unseen
(apparently underground) leaving Tannhäuser alone on the darkened stage the whole
time. The lights go up to reveal the Landgrave and his party standing on the stage behind
the void which highlights Tannhäuser’s moral, artistic and emotional separation from
them. This makes it hard for the singers to project their opening phrases from such a long
way back, and inevitably some sound was lost in the void.
Far from being the noble hunting party described by Wagner these are present day
soldiers armed to the teeth who instantly aim their guns at the unknown intruder.
Gradually they come down to join him on the forestage, making him one of their group
again even before he decides to return to them. His different relationships with them are
very clearly marked. I particularly noticed his hesitation before clapping Biterolf on the
shoulder. Clearly there has been little love lost between them in times past, and this paves
the way for their clash in Act II.
At the end the group leaves and the inner proscenium and the curtain descends
again. Elisabeth appears from between the curtains, glowing with excitement and
happiness and goes to sit in the chair which Tannhäuser occupied at the beginning of the
Act just as the music ends and the lights go out. The cycle is beginning again, but in the
next Act Tannhäuser will perform and she will be in the audience.
The setting for Act II looks like a war zone. The inner proscenium lies collapsed
and in pieces. The curtain has been reduced to a few torn, discoloured fragments.
Everything is covered in plaster dust and a few misshapen gilt chairs lie scattered about.
The chorus men are all partisans, heavily armed with guns and bullet belts, wearing
overcoats and woolly hats. The women wear dark clothes with long overcoats like
Elisabeth’s with headscarves and they carry candles which they light, passing the flame
from one to another, and set them out in a phalanx at the centre of the stage. It looks like
a memorial, as though each candle is for someone who has died in the conflict.
I presume that all this is inspired by the Landgrave’s lines “Wenn unser Schwert
in blutig ernstern Kämpfen/ stritt für des deutschen Reiches Majestät” (If our swords in
battles grim and bloody did battle for the majesty of the German realm). It is an effective
– 12 –

way of presenting the scene, and shows one more reason why everyone turns against
Tannhäuser when the truth has been revealed. They have been risking their lives in the
struggle for freedom while he has been enjoying a life of idleness in the Venusberg.
Elisabeth is like a saint to them. She is the pure beacon for whom they fight – her white
dress stands out amid the dark clothing worn by those around her. They are all terribly
proud of her. But she is no saint, but a flesh-and-blood woman, ready to break free of the
confines of her life.
The civilised song contest between the Minnesängers (who look faintly awkward
in their dinner jackets beneath their overcoats) contrasts oddly with their audience of
rough fighters who hang eagerly upon every note sung. It underlines the importance of
culture to this war-torn environment far more than a conventional mediaeval production
could do. But Tannhäuser’s interventions undermine the courtly ritual and violence
begins to surface. Reinmar steps forward to reply to Wolfram’s song, but Tannhäuser
rudely pushes him out of the way. Biterolf has to be physically restrained by the other
Minnesängers from attacking Tannhäuser, shakes himself free and grips his skull,
desperate to regain control. When Tannhäuser discloses that he has been in the Venusberg
the men turn upon him savagely, all veneer of civilisation gone.
Act III is set in a desolate landscape littered with pieces of the fallen proscenium,
now weathered almost beyond recognition. The tree from Act I has been uprooted and lies
leafless and dead at one side of the stage. Elisabeth, her coat tattered, her pure white dress
stained and soiled, wanders amid the desolation. The pilgrims cross the stage, slowly
removing their upper garments, presumably to denote their spiritual cleansing, while
Elisabeth searches desperately among them until she collapses, exhausted, in Wolfram’s
arms. During the postlude to her prayer she walks slowly to the back of the stage until she
is enveloped in its darkness, a deeply moving moment.
Tannhäuser stumbles in at the back in the wake of the rejoicing pilgrims. Both his
confrontation between Wolfram and the Rome Narration are performed very simply with
no distractions whatsoever and are all the better for it. All the more pity then that the
finale is so disappointing. The void yawns and Venus arises from it, reclining on her
chaise-longue to receive Tannhäuser again. The speed with which she then has to
disappear is almost comical. There is no sight of Elisabeth’s funeral procession and
Tannhäuser simply wanders out at the back as she had done, while Wolfram staggers
brokenly away at the side. The pilgrims flood onto the stage singing the final chorus and
the Shepherd Boy returns, casts the dead tree aside, plants a sapling and sits in the chair
to watch it during the final chords. This ending carried a message of new growth and new
beginnings, but there was little visual sense that Tannhäuser had been redeemed.
This was the first staging of Tannhäuser at Covent Garden for 23 years. One
reason for its long absence was undoubtedly the extreme difficulty in casting the arduous
title role which has been shunned by many experienced Siegfrieds and Tristans. Johan
Botha attracted some unkind comments in the national press due to his bulk and
ungainliness. However I felt that Albery treated his giant economy size tenor with great
tact, and constructed a production which took account of his physical limitations in a way
– 13 –

which last year’s revival of Lohengrin signally failed to do. Botha stayed the course nobly
through his marathon role with only a couple of minor vocal blemishes, trumpeting his
calls to love, shading his voice most beautifully in his love scene with Elisabeth and
saving impressive vocal and emotional power for the Rome Narration.
Photo: Clive Barda, The Royal Opera
Elisabeth is frequently played as a bloodless saint, but the ever-remarkable Eva-
Maria Westbroek created the character of a vital, passionate woman who is defined by her
love for Tannhäuser and who is destroyed by his betrayal. She blazed across the stage. It
was impossible to take one’s eyes from her, and the urgency and full-bloodedness of her
singing endowed the role with a sensuality that it does not usually have. Her acting in Act
III was especially astonishing. In her Prayer, she seemed to be consciously willing herself
to death, like the Chosen Maiden in Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring, and in her final
exit, barely able to stand, she appeared to merge into the darkness as though she were
vanishing up to Heaven before our eyes.
It would be hard for any Venus to win a fight against this Elisabeth for
Tannhäuser’s love and Micaela Shuster did not quite manage it. As I indicated above, the
production portrayed the goddess as an ageing, desperate woman, and Schuster’s hard
voice and presence held little allure. It was a vocally strong performance, but not an
attractive one.
By common consent, the Wolfram was the star of the show. The Royal Opera
House scored a coup by engaging the great Lieder singer Christian Gerhaher for his first
operatic appearances in this country. It is very hard to write about such an artist as this,
because he makes everything seem so simple. Art conceals art. His voice is indescribably
beautiful, like listening to a rich silk scarf sliding slowly to the ground. But his artistry
goes beyond a vocal beauty that makes one want to weep. To hear him sing Wagner’s
music with every word perfectly nuanced and every note precisely shaded with the care
of a master Lieder performer was a revelation, unlike anything I have heard in Wagner.
Whatever the rest of the performance had been like, it would have been worthwhile to
hear him sing “O du mein holder Abendstern”, five minutes of pure operatic heaven.
Dramatically, too, he was remarkable. Wolfram’s timidity in Elisabeth’s presence,
– 14 –

his fatal inability to declare himself to her, his physical gaucheness and self-effacing
modesty were so convincingly portrayed that I thought at first that Gerhaher must be
inexperienced as a stage performer. I only gradually realised that it was simply brilliant
acting from a performer so subtle that he never lets us know that he is acting. The moment
in Act III when Elisabeth refused his request to accompany her and he hugged her
awkwardly in farewell said everything that could never be spoken and was utterly
heartbreaking. One sensed that Wolfram knew that he would have to live on that moment
for the rest of his life. I felt privileged to have seen him and can only hope that the Royal
Opera House hires him again sometime.
David Waters has reported that on 18 December Gerhaher was snowbound in
Munich and arrived in time only to sing Act III. In the first two acts a stage director
walked the role of Wolfram onstage while Daniel Grice, a Jette Parker Young Artist, sang
from the side of the stage. By all accounts he did extremely well, but I have to ask why
the Royal Opera had not ensured that the cover for a major role in a major production was
not sufficiently prepared to be able to sing on stage. Both Grice and the audience were
short-changed.
This vexed question rose again at the performance under review, as Christoph
Fischesser, cast as the Landgrave, was suffering from a throat infection. Once again the
cover, the excellent Andrew Greenan, was obliged to sing from the side while Fischesser
acted. The sense of alienation was acute, especially in Act I when Fischesser was standing
well upstage while Greenan’s voice rang out from down right, and was heightened
because Fischesser did not bother to mime the words. If one was not watching Greenan,
and was not familiar with the score, it was hard to tell when the Landgrave was singing.
The Royal Opera really has to do better than this.
There was fine work from the other Minnesängers, especially Timothy Robinson’s
haughty, exquisitely lyrical Walther – I would like to hear him sing David someday – with
strong support from Steven Ebel’s touchingly awkward, enthusiastic Heinrich, Jeremy
White’s genial Reinmar, and Clive Bayley’s edgy, touchy Biterolf, a human powder keg
waiting to explode.
Semyon Bychkov, building on his 2009 triumph here in Lohengrin with the same
tenor, conducted a spacious, majestic, intense account of the Paris version of this
problematic and much-changed score, drawing superb work from the orchestra and the
hugely augmented chorus. The sound of the massed Pilgrims returning from Rome was
truly epic. Yet my abiding memory of the evening will be of one man singing to a harp
on a darkening stage. Less can be more. The Landgrave may be the ruler, but Wolfram
was King of the night.
– 15 –

Paul Dawson-Bowling Annual Lecture 26th January 2011
DONALD MCINTYRE: COLOSSUS FROM NEW ZEALAND
Report by Jeremy Rowe
A good crowd attended Portland Place Sixth Form Centre to hear Paul Dawson-
Bowling interview Sir Donald McIntyre. Paul and Sir Donald had chosen four extracts
from DVDs of Sir Donald’s performances, and these formed the basis of Paul’s questions.
First we saw the Dutchman’s opening scene from Sir Donald’s 1975 movie. Filmed
largely in a lake in Germany, Sir Donald had spent much of the filming wearing a wet suit
and splashing around in freezing water. Of his performance he commented: “We’re here
not because it’s easy, but because it’s difficult.” He told us that he found the character of
the Dutchman challenging: “hard to find the core of the role.” He had searched and
searched and decided the Dutchman was mad. (He used the German word verrückt.)
He said he was always very interested in the psychology of the characters, and
especially with the conflict within a character. He felt Wagner developed this more and
more over time, and this notion of inner conflict had reached its zenith with Parsifal and
Hans Sachs. In preparing a role Sir Donald looked for the two sides of each character. In
doing so he had been strongly influenced by Klemperer, who encouraged him to seek the
“Fundament”, the guts of the performance.
The second DVD extract was Wotan’s Act II monologue from Chereau’s 1976 Ring
at Bayreuth. Sir Donald continued his theme of seeking the core of a character, quoting
Glen Byam Shaw’s instruction to “look for the truth of a performance”. He paid tribute
to what he had learned from the “great team of coaching experts” at Covent Garden,
especially Reggie Goodall who had given him “hours and hours and hours”.
He told us how he had liked working with Chereau, who at only 27 had a new view
of the Ring, and brought a pedagogic approach to the staging. Constantly asking
questions, he would continuously try different moves within each scene, forcing much
rethinking of the characterisations.
The final extracts were shorter, and both from Meistersinger. First we saw
some of the 1988 production from Sydney, then some of the 1984 production from
Zurich. Sir Donald noted that the role of Hans Sachs is the most demanding of all
Wagner’s leading men – more to sing in one evening, than the whole of the Wotan part in
the Ring.
Sir Donald concluded by saying, “This job I’ve had ..... I cannot think of anything
I’d rather have done. It’s been just a thrill from beginning to end!”
Peter West, donningtonart@aol.com
– 16 –

“BEHIND THE SCENES AT BAYREUTH”
AN EVENING WITH JAMES RUTHERFORD
Report by Katie Barnes
It was a joy to welcome James Rutherford on 15th February to hear him talk to
Jeremy Rowe. He thanked the Wagner Society for their support in giving him his first
chance to sing the role of Hans Sachs, without which he would not have sung it at
Bayreuth.
After his success at the Seattle International Wagner Competition in 2007 Oper
Graz approached him to offer him Sachs, and Malcolm Rivers gave him the opportunity
to sing Act III Scene 1 with orchestra before he learned the rest of the score. His life
changed after the first night in Graz in September 2009 because it gained him so much
attention from European opera managements.
In January 2010 he was invited to audition for Katharina Wagner, who told him
that he was on “a short list of one” to replace Alan Titus as Sachs at Bayreuth. She wanted
a young singer who would be part of the ensemble rather than a ready-made star. He was
the only new member of the cast, and rehearsals began only 13 days before the first night.
Asked how much he was required to understand Katharina’s vision, he admitted
that the production looked unconventional, but that “when you’re on the inside, it’s
completely different”. Katharina has a showy side, but she also has tremendous integrity.
She makes a point of taking a bow after every performance so that the audience can boo
her!
He has now sung Sachs 16 times and feels that the role fits him like a glove. He
will sing his first Holländer in Hamburg next year (he understudied Bryn Terfel at Covent
Garden in 2009) and is looking at Wotan, but he has rejected offers to sing it in concert
in 2013, feeling that the role does not fit his voice so well as Sachs, and that he is not yet
ready for it. He is a regular guest at Graz, where he is currently singing Germont, and will
sing Iago and Orest there later this year. He ended by expressing regret that British
singers are so often unable to find employment in Britain and that financial constraints
mean that our companies can mount so few productions. In Graz money is no object.
Photo: Peter West donningtonart@aol.com
– 17 –

– 18 –

– 19 –

THE WAY TO THE GRAIL
Parsifal at English National Opera on 16th, 19th and 24th February 2011
Review by KATIE BARNES
On its first showing in 1999 Nicklaus Lehnhoff’s production was criticised for its
ugliness, yet I recall Philippe Monnet reviewing it in Wagner News and praising it for its
beauty. This Monsalvat is T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land, terribly bare and bleak. Despite the
abundant references to nature in the text, all we see on the stage are grim whites and greys,
unrelieved by so much as a blade of grass. The theft of the spear has caused the Grail’s
domain to decay to the point of total ruin.
In the first scene only the front half of the stage is visible. A section of the flooring is
raised, revealing a trap filled with stones and at the left is a chute with a pile of stones at its
foot. The floor is scattered with small stones and a couple of chairs stand at odd angles. The
back wall is peppered with bullet holes and studded with nails. The harsh white lighting falls
across the stage at an angle, making the nails cast long shadows and throwing huge,
intimidating shadows of the singers onto the back wall. A gigantic stone protrudes through a
huge, irregular hole in the back wall. It is the barrier which keeps all comers from
approaching the Grail unbidden. As the Squires intone the prophecy “Made wise through
pity, the purest fool” the stone moves backwards a little, creating a space through which
Parsifal climbs, clutching his bow and arrow.
Gurnemanz, Amfortas and all the Knights and Squires wear grey, with very pale,
grey-white makeup. Their costumes recall those of the Terracotta Army, with the Squires in
three-quarter length coats and pantaloons, the Knights in long, loose robes and skull caps (the
two solo Knights have coats fastened at one shoulder in Chinese fashion), and Gurnemanz,
his hair drawn back in a bun, in a massive overcoat with a huge, turned-over collar and central
fastening. The Chinese influence in the costumes recalls how Wagner’s interest in Buddhism
influenced the creation of the opera. Amfortas also wears a long robe with a golden crown,
and his upper body is bound in layers of ragged grey bandages. The whole effect is as though
the members of the Grail community have become dehumanised and are slowly turning to
stone. With the exception of Gurnemanz, they are certainly hard-hearted: the Knights and
Squires shrink from Kundry in terror when he is watching, but when his back is turned the
Third and Fourth Squires are menacing thugs who torment her mercilessly and later menace
Parsifal.
Parsifal and Kundry by contrast are both children of nature who wear rich russets and
browns. Kundry’s costume is especially effective: a long, close-fitting squirrel-red garment,
cream at the front, made of rough fabric which could be taken to resemble either fur or
feathers. Her hair is a mass of wild reddish-brown locks and she carries two great wings, one
of which falls from her in her headlong rush as she enters, and the other is later torn from
her by the Squires. Parsifal wears a brown jerkin and breeches, with an animal skin girded
about his waist and a rough battle jacket, apparently made from twigs. His hair is a mass of
brown dreadlocks roughly tied back and his face is covered with brown and white war paint
which looks effective but makes it hard for the singer to convey emotion.
The direction of the scene between Parsifal, Kundry and Gurnemanz is especially
good, bringing out the parallels with their scene in Act III, especially when Kundry brings
water to revive the fainting Parsifal. At “Who is good?” the three are standing in a diagonal
line, with equal spaces between them, and the deep connection between them could not be
shown more clearly. It was uncharacteristic, though, for the usually alert Gurnemanz not to
– 20 –

e allowed to look more surprised at seeing Kundry apparently swallowed up by the earth as
she slides into the open trap which closes behind her.
One of the production’s most breathtaking moments occurs during the
Transformation. The stage darkens, with a spotlight on Gurnemanz and Parsifal at the front
as they walk on the spot. Behind them the great stone slowly rotates and rolls aside, first to
the left and then to the right, before slowly rising into the flies. The way to the Grail is open
to them, just as Gurnemanz foresaw. But I had to see the production more than once before
realising the other significance of this effect: the stone was rolled away. The layers of
Christian imagery in this moment are astonishing.
The Grail chapel, revealed when the back wall rises during the Transformation music,
is another bleak waste land. The grey flooring curves upwards to form a back wall dotted
with stones and chairs at odd angles, with two vertical gaps which are used for entrances and
exits. Titurel’s appearance, rising from a trap at the centre of the stage, is a moment of pure
horror: he is a slack-jawed skeleton in gorgeous chain mail whose bony hands grip the edge
of the trap. He is hideously indifferent to his son’s despairing agony.
Photo: Richard Hubert Smith, ENO
The Knights file in in regimented columns, re-enacting a ritual which they have all
performed countless times, but when the anguished Amfortas begs to be released from his
burden they break rank, shrinking back from the sinner and all, even Parsifal, pushing him
away when he turns to each in turn in a plea for pity. At Titurel’s pitiless command “Uncover
the Grail!”, they close in upon him, pushing him from one to another, hemming him in until
all that can be seen of him is his hands, raised heavenward in despairing supplication. At last
they drive him to the back of the group and force him to his knees. (Gurnemanz stands back
from the violence, but does nothing to prevent it). That this scene should take place to the
ethereally beautiful music for the revealing of the Grail only serves to heighten its horror.
– 21 –

It is highly significant that the climax of the scene has no religious connotation.
There is no bread, no wine, no Communion, no Grail: what we see is more redolent of a
selfish drug trip than a shared sacred ritual. To this level the Grail’s devotees have sunk. One
by one the Knights rise and leave, revealing Amfortas lying on his face in a cruciform shape
before the light. He rises and the bandages across his stomach are stained with blood. He
stretches out his hands imploringly to the Knights as they leave, but only Gurnemanz notices
his distress and tries to wrap a blanket around him which he pushes off as he staggers away.
The Knights return in single file, each wearing identical armour like those of the
Terracotta Army warriors, with helmets which conceal their faces and carrying spears. (The
Spear may be lost to them, but in its memory a spear is their weapon of choice). The process
of dehumanisation is complete, and it is chilling. Only Gurnemanz, standing between the
regimented columns of marching Knights, wears no armour and remains human. As they
leave Amfortas stumbles towards his father, but Titurel turns from him and sinks into the trap.
Amfortas lies down beside the trap, holding his hand out after him.
Parsifal has watched all this with the liveliest curiosity, moving about the stage to see
everything from every angle. As the Knights file out he picks up the crown which Amfortas
earlier left beside the trap and admires it with childish delight. He has seen everything and
pities Amfortas without yet understanding. At Gurnemanz’s approach he guiltily hides the
crown behind his back and drops it. Gurnemanz angrily sends him away, retrieves the crown,
and walks slowly over to Amfortas. As the heavenly voice sounds above them both raise their
heads in a shared moment of hope before Gurnemanz places the crown upon his head. The
simple gold crown seems to be an infinite weight, and Amfortas sinks despairingly across
Gurnemanz’s knees. Gurnemanz gazes down at him in pity but does not touch him. The
grouping as the curtain falls resembles a Pietà.
The opening of Act II is visually stunning. The curtain rises to reveal a gauze
depicting an x-ray of a woman’s pelvis with Klingsor, framed by a golden hoop, suspended
in the womb.
Photo: Richard Hubert Smith, ENO
– 22 –

The emasculated sorcerer has usurped the very seat of creation. In contrast to the allgrey
Brotherhood, he is a riot of colour, clad in gorgeous red and white robes which make
him resemble a Kabuki warrior, with striking red and white makeup. At his command
Kundry arises from the depths with only her pale face, topped by a black skull cap, showing
in the darkness. Once they disappear and the gauze rises, the enchantment ends. The set is
virtually the same as it was for the Grail Chapel in Act I with the addition of a few dummies
clad in armour like those of the Grail Knights to indicate the bodies of those whom Parsifal
has slain. There is little to attract any wayward knights from the path of righteousness unless
Klingsor’s cunning plan is to mislead them into thinking that they have come home. He plans
to possess the Grail but his theft of the spear has turned his own kingdom, as well as
Monsalvat, into an arid waste land.
The Flower Maidens wear identical long, low-necked grey or brown dresses of
mediaeval cut with sweeping skirts and long, trumpet-like sleeves covering their hands and
reaching to the floor, which resemble the trumpets of lilies. These long sleeves are controlled
by rods which protrude from time to time, resembling stamens. It is a pity that their
headdresses are so unattractive. The choreography for this scene is hypnotic, with dancers
cleverly deployed among the singers to maximise the effect as they move about Parsifal, their
sleeves creating complicated patterns, sometimes barring his path. Despite the charm of their
singing, this scene has an increasing air of menace. Their only additional adornment is the
lighting, which bathes their dull gowns in a golden glow.
Kundry rises from the ground at the back of the stage, enveloped in a huge golden
chrysalis above which only her head is visible, topped by a golden helmet and plumes. She
remains in this position until the end of the Herzeleide narrative – a good visual effect, but
it is unfair to both singers because it maroons her upstage for far too long while singing very
difficult music and makes it impossible for them to relate to each other. While Parsifal
expresses his remorse she steps out from behind the chrysalis wearing a golden crinoline
with a tight, corseted bodice. It is as though she has been reborn, like a butterfly about to
take its first flight. She keeps her arms pressed close to her sides until the crucial moments
before the kiss, when she extends first one arm, then the other, to reveal vast sleeves like a
butterfly’s wings which seem to hypnotise Parsifal as they envelop him. The potential for
destruction in her kiss is horrifyingly clear, but so too is his ability to destroy, as is shown by
the way he rips her sleeves off as though killing an insect, just as the Squires tore one wing
from her in Act 1. She is left struggling on her back in a position which more resembles a
golden turtle than a butterfly (again, deeply unfair to the singer) until she draws herself clear
of the wrecked costume, leaving her in a tight gold corset with flowing skirt, with her black
hair drawn tight about her agonised face. Now at last this scene can, and does, take fire. The
abandoned chrysalis at the back of the stage appears in some way to be the source of her
powers, as she returns to stand behind it, towering over it, as she summons Klingsor.
Unfortunately the end of the act is a terrible anticlimax. Klingsor enters on foot
carrying the spear which Parsifal wrests from him after the tamest of struggles, and the allpowerful
sorcerer collapses and dies without so much as a whimper. Parsifal drives the point
of the spear into the ground, but as the set is so poverty-stricken, all that can happen to
destroy Klingsor’s “deceitful display” is that some of the chairs fall, Kundry’s chrysalis
collapses, leaving her grovelling on the ground, and an endless shower of blackened petals
drifts down to denote the demise of the flower maidens. The one truly inspired idea at this
point, is that during the final bars, Kundry curls up to fall into the “sleep of death” from
which Gurnemanz will eventually awaken her.
– 23 –

In Act III, as Parsifal says, everything is altered. A huge section has been cut out of
the floor and back wall, leaving a gaping black void from which a railway line, supported at
its rear on girders, extends to the front of the stage on the right-hand side. The tracks and
sleepers are broken at the end and shattered pieces lie about. Monsalvat is, literally as well
as figuratively, at the end of the line, and Kundry, covered in white draperies, lies at its
terminus.
A pit to the left of the stage contains several figures from the Terracotta Army, some
broken, stacked like toy soldiers in a box. One wonders whether they are Knights who have
turned to stone because the Grail was denied to them. Gurnemanz sits watching them like a
guardian of the dead, a huge robe draped over him so that he, too, resembles a statue. When
he first hears Kundry’s groan he does not stir, as though any movement is too much effort
after sitting immobile for so long. When she cries out again he rises, goes to her, and does
his best to revive her, but her position between the tracks makes it awkward for him to reach
her. She lurches to her knees with a shriek. She now wears a crumpled white gown with a
long train and is swathed in layers of white drapery, almost as though she were a mummy.
Her dangerous beauty is gone, and her plain face is serene. She wears a close-fitting cap from
beneath which pure white hair cascades to her waist. Gurnemanz, of course, grumbles at her
lack of thanks for restoring her to life, but does not realise how the need to help her has
brought him back to life too.
Parsifal enters, walking slowly along the railway track, carrying the Spear and
wearing elaborate black armour. He is utterly exhausted, and when he at last removes his
helmet, his pale face is lined with care and his eyes are heavily shadowed. Whatever he has
undergone since leaving Klingsor’s domain, it has marked him irrevocably. Even the
knowledge that he has reached his goal brings him little relief. His relationship with Kundry
is developed most beautifully in this scene, as one senses her bringing him, too, back to life.
She prostrates herself before him when Gurnemanz anoints him as King, is utterly astonished
when he baptises her, and sinks to the ground, sobbing, then rises and comes forward, her
arms spread wide in rapture, her pale face radiant. One feels the sense of release flooding
through her. She sits at the front of the tracks and during Gurnemanz’s Good Friday solo
Parsifal approaches her and takes her tenderly in his arms, resting her head upon his shoulder,
almost as though she were a child. There is a sense of the absolute love and trust between
them.
The bells sound and Gurnemanz leads Parsifal and Kundry away, down into the black
void beneath the railway line. For some time the stage is left empty, then Amfortas stumbles
in along the track. He takes refuge in the pit containing the statues from which he lifts the
tiny, shrivelled form of the dead Titurel. The voices of the chorus sound somewhere in the
void before they begin to emerge from the darkness and struggle up the steps onto the stage.
They are now dressed as soldiers from the First World War, wearing long grey coats which
echo their Act I costumes, with knapsacks, equipment belts and helmets with gas masks. It
is like watching John Singer Sargent’s painting, “Gassed”, coming to life. A seemingly
endless tide of wrecked, shattered humanity pours onto the stage while the music tolls out
remorselessly. Their cries of “Just one last time!” still haunt me. It is shattering.
Through their sufferings, the Knights have become human again, but their selfish
persecution of Amfortas remains unchanged. While he laments over his father they stand, sit
or lie in ragged groups around the stage, their former rigid discipline forgotten, either
ignoring him or watching with increasing impatience until, as before, they turn on him in a
solid mass, pinning him into the centre of the group. Some have their backs towards the
– 24 –

audience, and their goggles and gas masks glinting on the backs of their helmets make them
look eerily inhuman again. Just as Amfortas is about to succumb Parsifal appears, walking
slowly along the track, carrying the spear, with Gurnemanz and Kundry behind him.
Gurnemanz follows him onto the stage but Kundry remains on the track, apart from the rest.
The ending, so different in this production from what Wagner wrote in the libretto,
has divided opinion, but I find it enthralling. The spear never touches Amfortas’ wound.
Parsifal ceremoniously gives it to Gurnemanz, who bears it to the centre of the stage and
stands like a sentinel, gazing up at the tip. The knights gather around him and kneel
reverently. Parsifal approaches Amfortas who places his crown upon Parsifal’s head,
embraces him, and dies in his arms.
It is Amfortas, not Kundry, who finds the peace of death. Full of compassion, Parsifal
lays the dead king upon the ground and gently closes his eyes, an overwhelmingly moving
moment. He crosses the stage to the body of Titurel, takes off the crown and lays it upon the
corpse. He will not stay in the place which has destroyed the man whose suffering taught him
pity. He looks up and sees Kundry watching him. She holds one hand out to him then turns
and begins to walk slowly away along the track. He slowly follows her out and a strong light
shines onto their faces as they go. One knight looks round at them, rises, crosses to look at
Amfortas and then at Titurel, and follows them. One by one, three more do the same. As the
curtain falls, a fifth knight rises, and who knows how many more may follow after them?
Most of them will remain with what they know, and surely Gurnemanz will govern the
Brotherhood well, but there will always be an adventurous few who will strike out to the
world beyond. Who can tell where they are going? Inevitably in a Wagnerian context, the
presence of a railway line suggests a concentration camp, but the light towards which they
walk suggests a brighter future. As at the conclusion of Goethe’s Faust, the eternal woman
leads them on.
The production has been completely recast since the last run, twelve years ago, and a
whole new generation of Wagner singers has grown up in the meantime. This is an
international cast, and very much of international standard, with representatives from both
the “older generation” of Wagnerian singers and those who have arisen since.
Over the years ENO have had a fortunate knack of finding magnificent Heldentenors,
even when there has been a worldwide shortage of the breed. Stuart Skelton’s Parsifal
continues this happy tradition. It is his first Wagnerian role for ENO, and I hope so much that
the company will invite him back to sing more. His voice seems limitlessly, effortlessly
heroic. His cry of “Amfortas!” – the turning point of the opera – is almost cosmic in its
power. His mighty Act 2 monologue and his guilt-ridden laments in Act 3 are thrilling. Yet
he can also summon lyric tenderness for the Good Friday music and bemused wonder for his
confrontation with the Flowermaidens. He is ill served by his costume and makeup for the
first two acts, but makes the most of his imposing appearance in Act 3 in splendid armour
which weighs him down like the woes of the world, just as the puzzled, uncomprehending
stare of the pure fool gives way to the steady gaze of the wise, compassionate bearer of the
spear.
Sir John Tomlinson’s Gurnemanz silences all those critics who think it unnecessary
for ENO to perform in English. Of all roles in opera, it is hard to think of one where it is
more important for the words to be understood. To hear one of the greatest of all operatic
communicators sing one of his signature roles in his native language is an experience like no
other. It is not just because every word rings out with perfect clarity (something which, alas,
can be said of all too few opera singers today). It is because he lives the character so
– 25 –

completely and reaches out to the audience, drawing us into the experience of the character,
the music, the opera, as surely as if he were placing his hand upon each person’s shoulder,
just as he places his hand upon Parsifal’s shoulder during the Transformation. We experience
all his tales of the past as though we had witnessed them with him.
This Gurnemanz is so fierce and intense in everything he does. His weariness and
despair over Amfortas’ wound, his delight at seeing Kundry ride, his irritation with the
Squires and later with the foolish Parsifal, his overwhelming, radiant delight at the return of
the spear, his tenderness towards the exhausted Parsifal, his triumphant joy in the Good
Friday scene, are all so incredibly vivid. These performances mark his first Wagner role with
his parent company since King Marke in 1985, before his Wotan conquered the world. One
can only be grateful that he has returned. I cannot admire enough his dedication in relearning
one of his longest roles in English at this stage in his career, but the effort has paid
off a hundredfold. He shows us the way to the Wagnerian Grail.
Photo: Richard Hubert Smith, ENO
Jane Dutton joined the cast at a late stage following the withdrawal of the singer
originally cast as Kundry. To sing this massively complex role for the first time, in
translation, in such a complicated production, at such short notice, and to bring as much to
it as she does, is an astonishing achievement. The wild creature of Act 1 is softer, more
vulnerable and womanly than usual. At rest, she lies on her front, one hand – I almost wrote
“paw” – drawn across the lower half of her face, displaying her huge, beautiful dark eyes,
which tell of numberless tragedies throughout an endless life. In the scene with Klingsor, she
is as pale as death, only her unadorned face visible, a tormented spirit floating in a sea of
blackness, struggling to free herself from enchantments which she cannot control.
Unfortunately the direction of her great scene with Parsifal is not helpful: the Herzeleide
narrative loses impact because she is placed so far upstage, and Dutton’s diction is not strong
enough to project her words across the void. Once she has escaped from the chrysalis, her
– 26 –

acting in this scene is horrifyingly intense – the triumph and horror in her eyes could give
me nightmares – but the voice sounds watery at either end of the range. In Act III her every
movement is slow, gentle, peaceful and ineffably beautiful. Her whole being is concentrated
upon Parsifal and her eyes hardly ever leave him.
Iain Paterson is one of ENO’s recent success stories. Unlike so many other young
singers he has been content to build his voice and his dramatic range slowly and carefully.
This season, all his work has paid off, with a triple triumph at ENO as Gounod’s
Mephistopheles, Don Giovanni, and now Amfortas. He gives some of the finest-shaped, most
lyrical, most powerful singing of the night. It is a pity that the production makes him stagger
about so much, but the strong, passionate anguish of his acting carries all before him. What
a notable Wagnerian he has become. Thirty-three years ago, Felix Aprahamian wrote of
tonight’s Gurnemanz, “He will be a fine Sachs one day.” I will stick my neck out and make
the same prophecy for tonight’s Amfortas.
Tom Fox presents an elegant and striking figure as Klingsor, but is too ironically
detached for my taste, not seeming to be greatly troubled by Kundry’s taunt (which should
be a body blow), and he is not a convincing adversary in the final confrontation with Parsifal.
His voice is excellent, if a little light for the role, but his American accented vowels jar
terribly in the English translation (“My magic casstle...Where have you bin?”). I find it hard
to believe that no English singer was available who was capable of taking this small but
crucial role.
Andrew Greenan is a superbly resonant, utterly horrifying Titurel, and there is fine
work from all the singers in the lesser roles, especially Sarah-Jane Davies as the leading
Flowermaiden, ENO debutant Robert Winslade Anderson as Second Knight, and
Christopher Turner as the thuggish Third Squire. The chorus, hugely augmented (forty-eight
in the first act, twenty-three in the second, a staggering sixty in the third) has rarely sounded
better, and in the third act creates an overwhelming impact.
It is unbelievable that this should be Mark Wigglesworth’s debut with ENO, and even
more so that this should be the first time he has conducted Parsifal. Already he conducts it
with as much ease and familiarity as if he has already been performing it for many years, and
he makes the ENO orchestra sound as it never has before. Pelléas et Mélisande has been
described as the Debussy opera that Wagner never wrote: Wigglesworth gives Parsifal
Debussyian clarity, suppleness, delicacy and poise, and noble majesty. Even the soft opening
of the prelude is a muted cry of pain, an echo of the agony which blazes forth like a forest
fire in the Transformation music and Amfortas’, and later Kundry’s, anguish. The Good
Friday music has indescribable tenderness, a moment of spiritual refreshment before the epic
desolation of the funeral march. He balances pit, stage and offstage forces perfectly, no easy
task in the Coliseum’s tricky acoustic. The offstage choruses are placed backstage, but the
Voice from above is in a Balcony corridor with a door open, creating a beautifully unearthly
sound. He gains extra points from me for his attention to one of my favourite passages in Act
I just after the first entrance of the offstage chorus, which I have always believed to be
Wagner’s tribute to the St Matthew Passion.
This is the first time that ENO have performed Wagner since the Ring project of
2001-2005. Financial difficulties had precluded any Wagner performances in the meantime,
and this revival was only achieved thanks to a public appeal which, by the time of the dress
rehearsal, had already raised an encouraging £35,000 of the projected £40,000. On this
showing, the company is set for a Wagnerian renaissance. There is clearly a public appetite
for them to perform more. One can only hope that, in the current financial climate, they will
be able to do so.
– 27 –

PARSIFAL AT ENGLISH NATIONAL OPERA
16th February and 8th March 2011
Review by Paul Dawson-Bowling
Sometimes an objectionable production seems to improve with revival, but
Lehnhoff’s Parsifal seems even more a desecration of the work’s spirituality than twelve
years ago. Lehnhoff seems incapable of seeing Wagner’s sound-scapes with his ears or
understanding Wagner’s enriching deployment of archetypes. His drab metal staging
suggested something vaguely post-apocalypse in Acts I and III, and both this and his
x-ray framework of a blasted, traumatised female pelvis for Act II were as at odds with
the work as his refusal to allow any Grail.
Even if he thinks Wagner’s Christianity is such a silly old story that he, the great
Lehnhoff can do better, he might respect the Jungian sacredness of Parsifal which
Lehnhoff’s old master Wieland Wagner understood so well. It is not a matter of mere
convention that the restoration of spear and chalice at the end creates such fulfilment.
These are archetypal symbols of the genders; and their reunion symbolises schism made
whole at the deepest level of the psyche, and yet what did Lehnhoff offer us here? No
grail but schism in the brotherhood made permanent, with Parsifal wandering up the
railway line after Kundry, taking with him some straggling rebels from the fellowship. For
Heaven’s sake! The world today is even more in need of injunctions to draw together and
resolve disunities, not to multiply them.
When Lehnhoff’s psyche-shrivelling concept last had the gall to show its face on
the ENO stage, it was compensated by Mark Elder, magnificent in the pit. This time the
unalterable compensation was the superb singing, above all that of Iain Paterson
(Amfortas), Stuart Skelton (Parsifal) and John Tomlinson (Gurnemanz). Mark
Wigglesworth, the conductor is something of an enigma, quite different at the two
performances I attended. First time round, he simply made every mistake in the book,
starting with his positioning of the orchestra, which put the brass together in a blodge on
the right, and cramped up the double basses on the extreme left. This wrecked the balance
and spoilt the luminous clarity of the Parsifal sound although the orchestra still played
magnificently.
Wigglesworth turned the upbeat in the Parsifal March into a skittish yumti-tum
yumti-tum, instead of a heavy yumtarum yumtarum, and the choppy, piecemeal result
seemed characteristic of his whole approach. And one of my personal bête noires: he
dragged back terribly in the first great C major statement of the Grail theme, giving us
bombast and windbags where Wagner created splendour. Wagner’s scores brim with
detailed suggestions as to every minute tempo adjustment that he wanted, but there is
nothing to justify this horrible “tradition”. The second performance sounded so different
that it was difficult to believe it had the same conductor. His faults had not vanished but
were now rectified and redeemed by a new sweep and conviction, so that this time we
were given all the rapture and the majesty of Parsifal. It is a pleasure to report that, while
the production remained a desecration, this was musically a very special experience.
– 28 –

Received after the January issue of Wagner News had gone to print
RYAN AND THIELEMANN TRIUMPH IN DER RING
Review by Robert Mitchell
Tancred Dorst’s staging has a parallel world with everyday people doing everyday
things. Paying attention to these superfluities invariably exhausts the mind or makes one
miss key events of the drama or, as in the case of the discarded pram on the Walkürenfels,
or the builders merchant’s palette that poor Brünnhilde has to go to sleep upon, merely
irritates.
But this production could triumph. For me the stage set of the Norns, standing atop
a mass of skulls with a black, starry backdrop was a world beater, as was the first scene
of Rheingold. It was a pity that such superb imagination did not inform the rest of the
drama. And don’t these modern producers know that the most effective Magic Fire is the
one without all that smoke – it’s magic after all? I’m afraid that the significance of the
Rhinemaiden’s mammary gland exposure configuration escaped me entirely.
Lance Ryan’s Siegfried falls into the ideal class. He has a pleasant tenor voice of
great potential power used with great intelligence and economy, and his breath control is
phenomenal. He is histrionically alive to the meaning of every phrase throughout. His
movements are so natural and reflect the music. His acting has marvellous spontaneity as
in the sword-forging scene. His awakening of Brünnhilde is just streets ahead of anything
I’ve seen in 45 years, except perhaps Manfred Jung in Duisburg back in 1979.
Christian Thielemann’s conducting was excellent in most respects and unfailingly
considerate to the singers. There was a nice ebb and flow of tempi when the occasion
required. The orchestral Klang was perfectly balanced and the detail was incredible. As
an example the seductive bass clarinet at Flosshilde’s “Seligster Mann”, or when the
Wanderer answers the second question he sings “der Fasolt fällte, als wilder Wurm hütet
nun Fafner den Hort” and a triple drum beat representing Fafner’s heart beat should
immediately follow “fällte” and accompany “wilder”. This was particularly accented in
this performance as indeed it should be, being marked “crescendo”, but in a random
check of ten other performances the drums come over as a slight muffled sound at best,
all except for Furtwängler at La Scala in 1950, where the second triple beat is heard. Even
Karajan misses it. Indeed Thielemann’s realisation of the score is a marvel and such score
observations were realised a thousandfold.
Albert Dohmen’s Wotan grows in stature with each passing year. Andrew Shore
and Arnold Bezuyen triumphed as Alberich and Loge. Wolfgang Schmidt gave a finely
nuanced Mime. Eric Halfvarson returned as a black-voiced Hagen. The irresistible Edith
Haller added a promising Sieglinde to her already superlative Freia, Third Norn and
Gutrune. She has a lovely smoky middle register. Johan Botha delivered a fine, bel canto
Siegmund with the required heft at the critical moments. Linda Watson was in vocal
difficulties and was replaced by the brilliant Sabine Hogrefe in Siegfried. This lady surely
has a brilliant future.
All in all a very well sung Ring, and one whose passing, musically at least, I shall
miss.
drrgm@hotmail.co.uk
– 29 –

STEPHEN FRY: WAGNER AND ME (DVD)
Review by Chris Argent
There is no doubt about it: Stephen Fry is a cheeky chappie. He
cunningly contrived to be invited to visit the Festspielhaus by the
powers that be in Bayreuth. It is thus that this account of his
obsession with Richard Wagner’s music dramas commences with
the bland announcement that, in essence, “Here I am in Bayreuth
at the invitation of the Festival organisers”. We then see the man
who unhappily recognises that he is just as much a devotee of
Richard Wagner (the music rather than the man) as was Adolf
Hitler, whose very name still inspires fear and hatred in the hearts
of millions of Jewish people worldwide, (including Stephen Fry)
as well as revulsion in the minds of most civilised souls.
For much of the film Fry attempts, not entirely successfully, to address that
problem. He characterises the generic significance of the Ring cycle after acknowledging
that he was initially hooked by the Prelude to Tannhäuser at the tender age of 12. As so
many of those who have worshipped at the shrine of Richard Wagner have realised, the
Ring portrays many of the worst features of the human species: the capacity for betrayal,
the thirst for power, the drive for domination and man’s basic cupidity. All of these vices
are only partially offset by the virtues of love and compassion which, of course, also
feature in Wagner’s music dramas – albeit love, in Wagner’s major opus, between siblings
and between aunt and nephew. Having adumbrated these features of the mythological
setting adopted by Wagner for his great Ring cycle, the question that hovers throughout
Fry’s journey is whether Adolf Hitler discerned and was attracted by the same attributes.
Given the amount of time that Stephen Fry spends, in the company of Joachim
Köhler (author of The Last of the Titans), in a comparison between Wagner’s version of
the celebrations held in Nuremburg in the 16th century and the rites organized for Hitler
in Nuremburg in the 20th century, the viewer can reasonably assume that Fry is denying
that the Nazi leader did perceive the essence of Wagner’s paean of praise for German art
rather than for German nationalism. Indeed, the point emerges (even if Fry himself does
not make it) that Wagner was not really xenophobic though he was undoubtedly a German
nationalist before Germany itself existed as a political entity. Thus the German
nationalism exhibited in Der Meistersinger (completed in 1867) preceded the
Bismarckian coup that led to the establishment of the German state in 1871 – a
development, of course, welcomed ecstatically by Wagner.
It is quite clear that Hitler’s infatuation with Richard Wagner’s music dramas and his
intimate involvement with the Bayreuth set from 1923 into the early 1940s really bothers
Stephen Fry, as it must indeed worry many others of any religious persuasion or ethnic
origin who regard Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk as the summit of 19th century musical
drama. Fry’s and our revulsion with the hideous ideology (as Fry properly labels it)
propagated by Hitler and his murderous minions will be difficult ever to dispel when one is
faced with the fact that the German peoples in the days of the Weimar Republic viewed
Hitler as their Parsifal who would lead them out of economic turmoil and psychological
despair into the hallowed uplands of European domination and national pride.
The film cleverly integrates an account of Wagner’s career and his appalling
behaviour. Fry points to some (but not all) of these: Wagner’s affairs with the likes of
– 30 –

Mathilde Wesendonck, his devious exploitation of Mathilde’s husband and sundry other
creditors including the young besotted King Ludwig II of Bavaria, his rapacity,
extravagance and perpetual plea that the world owes him a living (and who can say
Wagner was wrong?) his despicable behaviour towards Meyerbeer (who endeavoured to
help the young unknown composer in Paris) and his disdain for Mendelssohn. He also
focuses on Wagner’s conducting chores in, inter alia, St Petersburg, Riga and Leipzig,
and relates these experiences to the compositional history of the Ring in particular and
his other music dramas in general.
We see Stephen Fry navigating his way around the back-stage areas of the Festival
Theatre on the Green Hill (the latter being accorded due reverence and an explanation of
the role of the city fathers in helping Wagner achieve his ambition to build a theatre just
for his own musical edifices). He alludes to Wagner’s admiration for Greek tragedy and
for Hellenistic democratic principles as well as for Shakespeare, Mozart, Beethoven and
Weber – all of whom Wagner venerated.
After loitering in the rehearsal room watching Act III of Die Walküre Fry wends
his way into the main auditorium, commenting on the acoustics, architecture, financing
and construction as he went, ending up in the pit on the conductor’s stool, visibly moved
by the thought that he was sitting on the same seat that was once occupied by Richard
Wagner and great conductors such as Fürtwangler and Hans von Bülow whose pictures
and those of other great conductors (both Aryan and Jewish, Nazi and apolitical) who
graced the pit in Bayreuth Fry examines (in one of the DVD’s extra items) in the
Conductor’s Corridor. He goes on into the Costume Department where he watches a
Walküren being kitted out, and progresses from there to the theatre’s archives where he is
shown the architectural plans for the theatre as well as a set of tickets for the 1876 Ring
cycle which he clearly coveted.
In the course of the 90 minute film we glimpse the Margravate Theatre in
Bayreuth, and the Wagner’s Wahnfried residence where on Wagner’s piano Fry lovingly
and reverentially plays the Tristan chord under the watchful eye of Stefan Mickisch, a
renowned Bavarian pianist who has been responsible for the introductory lectures given
before all the public performances in the Festspielhaus at Bayreuth since 1998. One of the
bonus items shows Mikisch giving a bravura performance, watched by an entranced Fry,
on Wagner’s piano of the redemption theme from the end of Götterdämmerung
emphasizing, to Fry’s great delight, the thrusting triplets.
Fry journeys to St Petersburg (as, of course, did Wagner) where we see him talking
to Valery Gergiev about the Mariinsky Ring production and listening to Gergiev’s
explanation that the Ossetian ambiance demonstrates that the Ring is of global rather than
merely Teutonic significance. At this juncture, we see Fry acknowledge that the Ring is
indeed susceptible to almost any variation of Wagner’s own stage directions, but yet has
to be divorced from the temporally-short period of its association with the Nazis and their
murderous ideology.
Back in Bavaria he visits Neuschwanstein, Ludwig II’s architectural extravagancy
dedicated to his obsession with Lohengrin and its trademark Schwann. We also see Fry
riding a steamer on Lake Lucerne with a companion who tells us (and Fry) that Wagner
once considered making arrangements for an open air performance (Bregenz style) on the
lake next to the Hotel Adler, though better counsel eventually prevailed. This section of the
‘extras’ is instrumental in reminding us that Wagner absorbed many of his conceptions of
Nature, the mountains, clouds, forests, rocks, storms and maybe even rainbows, from his
sojourn at Tribschen and contemplation of the exceptionally beautiful Lake Lucerne.
– 31 –

The extracts from Wagner’s musical oeuvre that accompany Fry’s journey round
his idol succeed remarkably well in whetting the appetite for the viewer’s next encounter.
We see a short section of Siegfried Idyll on the stairs at Wahnfried with Fry sitting
spellbound on the stairs where, in one of the DVD bonus items, he is shown entranced by
the playing of Traume. We get chunks of the Ring including the inevitable Ride of the
Valkyries which Fry suggests is possibly the best known tune in the world (an arguable
proposition), the Prelude to Tannhäuser and the love duet from Act II of Tristan und
Isolde (Fry intimating, not uniquely, that Wagner is quite deliberate in suggesting coitus
interruptus at the arrival of King Marke on the scene).
He goes into ecstatic overdrive when Dr Sven Friedrich (Director of the Wagner
Archive and Museum) shows him the autograph score for the Norns scene in
Götterdämmerung with marginal notes inscribed by the composer. Wearing white gloves
Fry practically salivates as we hear him ruminating, again in an extra item within the
DVD, that “surely Götterdämmerung has to be one of the greatest works of art ever
written” though, seemingly, he is unaware of the dismissive view of George Bernard
Shaw on the conclusion to the Ring cycle. This section of the DVD runs on into an
orchestral recital of subsequent scenes of the drama while Fry is shown ambling through
the empty theatre. Our intrepid traveller (perhaps unconsciously emulating the Wanderer
that was Wagner) is shown chatting briefly with a non-committal Eva Wagner-Pasquier
who now directs the Festival with her half sister Katharina Wagner who Fry evidently was
unable to interview. The extras also show the twenty first century version of the Wanderer
chatting to a chorus member, enquiring whether her Jewish ancestry had ever caused her
any problems during her three seasons in Bayreuth and receiving an emphatic negative.
(I suspect she was singled out by Stephen Fry so he could pose that specific question.)
Despite trying to balance his adoration of Wagner’s music dramas against the
horrendous consequences for European Jewry of Hitler’s misappropriation of the
composer’s herculean conceptions, Fry does ultimately acknowledge that the task is
effectively impossible. For all that, the journey conducted by the ubiquitous Stephen Fry
through the physical and intellectual landscape inhabited by Richard Wagner is
exceedingly rewarding, even if this reviewer did experience a modicum of envy.
ARE THESE OUR YOUNGEST READERS?
Photo: Stewart Maclean
Hello to brother and sister Bob (9 years old) and Catrin (6) of
the Maclean household in Scotland. Here they are snapped
whilst looking through their Nanny and Grandad’s Wagner
News. Catrin explained: “We like the pictures”.
Giants, a dragon, magic fire, flying horses, a young hero who
can be daft as a brush – it’s not so surprising, really, is it? Ed.
– 32 –

RICHARD WAGNER AND THE CENTRALITY OF LOVE
Book review by Dr Paul Dawson-Bowling
This is a difficult book, but uncommonly interesting. There are times when a
person might think that there can be nothing more to say about Wagner, and then
something comes along like this, full of novel suggestions and bold, original angles. The
purpose behind it (or “telos” as Mr Emslie prefers it) is not absolutely clear, but it is a
valiant effort to come to terms with the warring aspects of Wagner’s nature in new ways.
Its author does better at unpicking (one of his favourite words) Wagner’s attempt
at a synthesis and explaining it, than most other analysts from Ernest Newman onwards.
Many of these have simply taken and exaggerated Newman’s line of an unbridgeable gulf
between man – the horrible, detestable man – and the glorious artist. Mr Emslie analyses
the conflicted elements both in Wagner’s character and his artistic agenda, and he
attempts the heroic task of explaining how far Wagner succeeded in knitting everything
together, how far he failed, and why.
In the process he offers many valuable insights. He is clearer than George Bernard
Shaw’s The Perfect Wagnerite when it comes to teasing out the disjunctions in The Ring.
He is also excellent at explaining why Götterdämmerung and the redemption
finally offered by the all-wise, all-knowing Brünnhilde are so completely at odds both
with the plot and the ideological programme which Wagner built into the Ring. He argues
persuasively how Wagner’s prose output and his ten great works for stage interpenetrated
each other, although I think he sometimes pushes his arguments too far. He engages my
sympathy by clarifying an unsettled feeling about the length of Waltraute’s narration in
Götterdämmerung in that it holds back the action too far. Carl Dahlhaus went the other
way and contrasted Waltraute’s narration unfavourably with Wotan’s monologue in Act II
of Die Walküre, but Barry Emslie validates my impression that Wotan’s monologue is
gripping in every last syllable while Waltraute’s narration hangs fire.
His book still remains difficult, and any kind of resumé would need another book.
I can do no more than sample its ideas while explaining why its difficulties are not simply
a matter of my personal failings. I do wish that Mr Emslie’s book had had an editor to
persuade him to use a style less convoluted. Long tracts of it are elegant and lucid, but
others almost make Milton’s Areopagitica seem easy. Another problem is Mr Emslie’s
addiction to jargon, to strings of terms which may be common coin for the learned
academics and social philosophers who devised them, such as telos, trope, hermeneutics,
ontology, epistemology, but which are not easy for those outside the charmed circle.
A further difficulty is his tendency, like Humpty Dumpty, to make words mean
exactly what he wants them to mean. “Polemic” as he uses it simply seems to mean any
intellectual exposition, without the usual idea of something war-like, banner-carrying and
combative. Sometimes Mr Emslie does make it clear when he is changing a meaning.
Wagner’s works are a “swindle”, so he tells us, but then goes on to explain that he does
not mean that as a criticism, simply that Wagner deceptively and cleverly makes us
suspend disbelief and judgement in ways that are the necessary in art.
He refers to Wagner’s thinking as a “stew” and his prose works as “waffle”. It may
be that here too he does not intend anything disparaging, but a disparaging view of Wagner
by Mr Emslie is the impression that these expressions leave. It creates another difficulty
in that while he may justify redefining ordinary terms to mean something different, it is
– 33 –

difficult to keep his new meanings in focus when reading his text. In the case of the term
“swindle” something more like its usual meaning, “cheat, fraud, dishonest imposition”
keeps on persisting and vitiating his argument as I tried to follow it.
Another aspect of Mr Emslie’s main purpose is explicitly to demonstrate that
Wagner brought taboo subjects like incest and unfettered sexual freedom into his dramas
so that he could present them in ways that would normalise, legitimise and glorify them.
This would somehow enable him to indulge in them freely, so the argument runs. Wagner
was playing a strange game with his own intellect and conscience. However this idea
depends on the assumption that Wagner could only allow himself these forbidden
pleasures if he represented them within a drama in such a manner as to justify them in life.
Was Wagner such a rigidly moral person that he could only enjoy doing what he
wanted and was wrong if he created a dramatic, myth-soaked justification for it,
manipulating myth and logic in a drama in order to support his actions? If Mr Emslie
believes this, then he does not spell out why he believes it. Why did Wagner play these
mind games with himself? Why did Wagner need to glorify incest anyway? It is an
interesting question because the incest of Siegmund and Sieglinde is not a light incidental
in Die Walküre but a heavy central point, hammered home hard. Mr Emslie does not offer
an answer but I know of no evidence that Wagner took advantage of his intellectual and
artistic acrobatics to practise incest himself, as say, Eric Gill did.
Mr Emsley can also leave an uneasy sense that while his elaborate deductions are
glittering, shimmering constructs, they are not all necessarily correct. There appears to be
something in his explanations akin to the epicycles of Ptolemy. These were mathematical
schemas devised to explain the movements of the heavenly bodies when people believed
that the Earth was the centre of the universe, and that everything else gyrated around the
Earth. The results, Ptolemaic epicycles, were brilliant, more brilliant in a sense than the
mathematics that come into play if the Earth is seen as spinning round the Sun and so on.
Unfortunately epicycles were the wrong explanation, and perhaps some of Mr. Emslie’s
hypotheses are the epicycles of the Wagner firmament.
He is also in the habit of producing striking metaphors and then going on to use
them as the basis of arguments as though they were established facts. He has a flair for
arresting images and one of his most arresting is of Wagner “colonising” Christianity in
Parsifal in much the same way as a virus infests and colonises a living organism, but such
a choice of image is not intrinsically appealing, and raises the question of a deliberate
desire by Mr Emslie to place Wagner in an oblique and unpleasant light.
Mr Emslie argues that Wagner pulled off an amazing sleight of thought with
Kundry’s kiss. He sees this kiss as a real “tonsil tickler” so carnally satisfying for Parsifal
that he can now enjoy being both sinless because he has not copulated with Kundry but
also sexually indulged to the full by that orgasmic kiss. The purpose of this manipulation
is allegedly to enable Parsifal to do what he likes, to be both sexually abandoned and
religiously pure, and to justify Wagner in doing the same in real life. It would be
interesting to know of any evidence that this is what actually happened, either for Parsifal
or for Wagner. The prelude to Parsifal Act III is hardly a description of Parsifal going out
on an erotic rampage, a second Venusberg.
As for Wagner himself, Parsifal could never by then have opened up for him the same
freedom as he had once enjoyed among the ladies of the Magdeburg theatre. He was so
ravaged by age and disease that unless he possessed a physiology that was superhuman and
unique, any carnal sexual activities whatever must have been beyond him. It is worth
– 34 –

emembering first and foremost that there was his dreadful, soon to be lethal heart disease.
There was his pole-axing irritable bowel and his recurrent erysipelas. There were his bilateral
hernias, the ballooning of his insides pushing through the outer walls of his abdomen. There
were “nervous headaches” and he was in advanced renal failure, with his brain poisoned by
the noxious waste of his metabolism. How on earth did he do it: create Parsifal?
More convincing is Mr Emslie’s contention that the existence of love demands its
opposite: hatred. He mentions that Freud (himself of course a Jew) pointed out the extent
to which hatred and fear of Jewish outsiders provided Germans with a common enemy
uniting them. Without a common foe a common front often falls into dissension. There
was additionally a common experience of resilience under attack over the centuries: the
Jewish nation had survived against overwhelming odds and Germany too had survived
being overrun by the pillaging armies of the Swedes and the French, the Thirty Years War,
Louis XIV and Napoleon. However, because the Jews now occupied the same
geographical space as the emergent Germany, points of contact were more likely to
become flashpoints.
This review cannot convey even the gist of Mr Emslie’s book without going on far
too long, but I hope that this gives a little idea of its flavour. No newcomer is likely to be
attracted to Wagner because of it; anything but! However it does reward the effort of
pressing on because of its enriching insights, and even when it is wrong (as I believe it
not infrequently is) it is always interestingly wrong.
Barry Emslie. Boydell Press, Woodbridge Suffolk IP12 3DF
JONES-ROWE
Opera Tours
Luxury long weekend tours to exciting destinations, to see the works of
Richard Wagner and other composers.
Featuring small accompanied groups, gourmet gala dinners, airport
limo transfers, champagne receptions and best available seats in the house.
Single occupancy arrangements.
Bespoke summer festival tours also available.
jonesroweopera@btopenworld.com
www.jonesroweopera.org
+ 44 (0) 20 7402 7494
+ 44 (0) 7956 290 884
33 Lancaster Gate London W2 3LP United Kingdom
– 35 –

From Bill Bliss
LETTERS
I am full of praise for the work done by our committee members over the past year
concerning the financial irregularities of our previous treasurer. In particular you were all
very open and prompt in informing us about the crisis which at one time sounded as if it
was going to endanger the future of the Society. As ordinary members we only see a small
fraction of the work and worry involved. My small contribution to the contingency fund
set up at the time can more than happily remain with the Society.
But, and quite separately, am I the only member to feel a fraction of disquiet when
I read the latest issue of Wagner News and saw that the new chairman and web master are
co-owners of a commercial organisation that sells Wagner opera tours? This disquiet is
not reduced by the presence of an advertisement for those tours on page 35 (the only full
page advertisement in this issue). I am sure that everyone is behaving correctly and
honourably and I have no doubt that Jones-Rowe provide an excellent service. But for a
rank and file member of the Wagner Society (for over 20 years) there must be an absolute
perception of independence when I read the articles – and particularly the reviews – in
Wagner News. Obviously no reviewer would consider their judgement to be under any
form of influence but if two committee members are promoting tours to a particular
production that our reviewer has seen then impartiality could be perceived to be
compromised.
I hesitate to write my second paragraph but I am sure you would like to hear the
views of the rank and file and wonder if they are shared by any others. If I am in a
minority of one I shall be happy to accept that I am at one extreme of the bell curve
commoncottage@btinternet.com
Seeing the ENO/Goodall Ring cycles led Bill Bliss to become a Society member more than
30 years ago, winning the Bayreuth ticket ballot in 1988 for Lohengrin, which he describes
as “unforgettable.” He adds: “I have no musical aptitude, but my membership is for life.”
Jeremy Rowe writes:
Thanks, Bill for your encouraging words regarding the recovery of the Society
from its difficult times last year. We have received a number of letters like yours, and are
greatly encouraged that members have recognised the work done to rescue the Society.
Regarding the small opera tours company that my partner and I run as a side-line,
we are conscious of the risks of a conflict of interest, which we are extremely careful to
avoid. In the past we have always paid for advertising in Wagner News, and our company
in a small way sponsors the Society through donations. We were able to make a modest
donation to assist the Society through the recent financial crisis.
We do not advertise specific tours to the members of the Society, and we only
respond to enquiries we receive from our generalised advert. Incidentally, it’s not the day
job for either of us, and we arrange only a very few tours annually. The very limited
number of tours organised are booked well in advance, before reviews appear, and thus
patrons cannot be influenced by reviews appearing in Wagner News. I trust you and other
members feel reassured by these comments.
– 36 –

From Colin Humphreys
LETTERS
I smiled on reading Paul Dawson-Bowling’s review of the 2010 Bayreuth Ring.
Firstly, because it was his first Bayreuth Ring for 46 years, which beat my own lapse of
44 years that was remedied in 2009. Also, ruefully, because he sounds to have heard a
better cast than I did. We shared a delight in the conducting and an exasperation with its
occasional idiosyncrasies.
“Immer wieder gibt es Momente des Stillstand” (Time and again there are
standstill moments) was one of concepts behind Tankred Dorst’s Ring production
according, in 2009, to the accompanying booklet. So, I assumed that this must be behind
Thielemann’s making the Luftpause at the end of Götterdammerung.
That this sounds as though it had become an even bigger “standstill” last year set
me researching the provenance of the habit. From the 16 recorded live performances I
sampled, ranging from Bodanzky in 1938 to Barenboim in 1992, it emerged that
Thielemann’s partners in crime are Knappertsbusch and Böhm at Bayreuth, the former
pausing ever longer with the passing years. I can recall hearing Böhm do it there in 1965
and am pretty sure Solti used to at Covent Garden in the ‘sixties. My memory doesn’t
stretch to what Downes, Davis and Haitink did in the intervening years. As I was told at
the time that Maazel took a breather in 1968, one must conclude that this largely a
Bayreuth habit, but even there the exception rather than the rule.
Blessed as we are with Pappano and Bychkov, I suppose it is too much to hope that
London will ever hear Christian Thielemann’s Wagner conducting – the most inspiring I
have heard for many a year, Luftpause notwithstanding.
colin.g.humphreys@btinternet.com
Colin Humphreys’ interest in opera self-ignited at the age of sixteen and has endured for
fifty years. It started with Wagner: the Solti Ring in 1964 and Bayreuth in 1965 but has
since broadened to embrace the whole canon.
DAVID WATERS
Re-establishing Wagner News has been a process which has succeeded only due to the
willingness of David Waters to be unstintingly generous in sharing his time and his
knowledge to mentor a new editor into the job. I believe that Wagner News and its
readers are abundantly in his debt henceforth.
Roger Lee
Editor
– 37 –

FAREWELL TO...
DAME MARGARET PRICE
Welsh soprano Dame Margaret Price died on 28th January at the age of 69.
Initially a mezzo-soprano, she became successful as a lyric soprano specialising in
Mozart and some lighter Verdi roles, her lifelong preference being the performance of
lieder.
Singing Isolde in Carlos Kleiber’s 1982 recording of Tristan und Isolde was one
of the landmarks of her career, but she was never to perform this role on stage. Although
Kleiber’s choice for this title role created something of a surprise at the time, Barry
Millington writes: “It was a felicitous choice, however, as Price was able to bring the
virtues of a light, lyric soprano to a role traditionally taken by a vocal heavyweight. The
pure quality of her tone makes her seem an ideally young Irish princess, while Kleiber’s
conducting allowed her to explore nuances that would have been all but impossible
onstage.”
She was appointed DBE in 1993, retiring to the Pembrokeshire coast in 1999.
PHILIP SAUL
Some of our longer-standing members may remember Philip Saul who served as
Treasurer of the Wagner Society and who died on 15th November. He established a very
successful law practice having won half blues at sailing and shooting at St Edmund Hall
Oxford. An accomplished sailor and skier, he was also a well-known figure at Bisley, and
represented England at rifle shooting on 11 occasions. He sang with the South West
London Choral Society and was a regular correspondent in the letters page of The Times.
A full obituary appears in The Times of 19th January 2011.
Photo: Clive Barda,
The Royal Opera
STOP PRESS
In her December 2010 review of Tannhäuser at the Royal Opera
House on pages 11 to 15 (“Wolfram was the star of the evening”)
Katie Barnes writes of Christian Gerhaher: “To hear him sing
Wagner’s music with every word perfectly nuanced and every note
precisely shaded with the care of a master Lieder performer was a
revelation, unlike anything I have heard in Wagner. Whatever the
rest of the performance had been like, it would have been
worthwhile to hear him sing “O du mein holder Abendstern”, five
minutes of pure operatic heaven.”
On 13th March 2011 the Laurence Olivier Award for Achievement
in Opera went to Christian Gerhaher for his performance as
Wolfram von Eschenbach in the Royal Opera House production of
Tannhäuser.
– 38 –

President: Dame Gwyneth Jones
Vice President: Sir John Tomlinson
Chair Elect and Jeremy Rowe 0207 402 7494 lyceumschool@aol.com
Programme Director: Flat 20, 33 Lancaster Gate, London W2 3LP
Assistant
Programme Director: Gary Kahn programmeassist@wagnersociety.org
Treasurer: Mike Morgan mikemorgan@wagner65.wanadoo.co.uk
9 West Court, Downley, High Wycombe, Bucks, HP13 5TG
Financial Advisor: Ralph Wells ralphwells@02.co.uk
Membership Secretary: Mrs Margaret Murphy mm@misterman.freeserve.co.uk
16 Doran Drive, Redhill, Surrey, RH1 6AX
Bayreuth Bursary and Maureen McIntosh ma.mcintosh@hotmail.co.uk
Minutes Secretary: Kimbalyn, Shernfold Park Farm, Frant, East Sussex, TN3 9DL
Ticket Secretary: Pam Hudson 01462 675 638 phudson@talk21.com
Howard Gate, Howard Drive, Letchworth Garden City SG6 2BQ
Website and Publicity: Ian Jones webmaster@wagnersociety.org
Flat 20, 33 Lancaster Gate, London W2 3LP
Archivist: Geoffrey Griffiths g.bg@btopenworld.com
Editor of Wagner News: Roger Lee penmaenmawr@hotmail.com
Cefn Maen, Mountain Lane, Penmaenmawr, Conwy, LL34 6YP
Artistic Director of The Malcolm Rivers malcolmpk@rivers44.fsnet.co.uk
Mastersingers Company: 44 Merry Hill Mount, Bushey, Herts. WD 23 1DJ
Society Website: www.wagnersociety.org
The Wagner Society is registered charity number 266383.
– 39 –

NEWS OF YOUNG ARTISTS
Three graduates of the 2010 Goodall Academy will appear together this summer in the
Grange Park Opera production of Tristan und Isolde with Alwyn Mellor as Isolde and
Andrew Rees as Melot, whilst Stuart Pendred will make his professional debut in opera
there, first as a member of the Tristan chorus and then in the role of Marullo in Rigoletto.
This summer Alwyn Mellor performs Brünnhilde in Siegfried at
Longborough Festival Opera. In 2011/12 she will sing Brünnhilde in
Siegfried for Den Nye Oper and for Oper Leipzig as well as Sieglinde
in Die Walküre for Opera North. Her 2012/13 plans include Brünnhilde
in Die Walküre and Siegfried for the Paris Opera plus Ortlinde in Die
Walküre for the Royal Opera, also covering Susan Bullock as
Brünnhilde. She sings Brünnhilde in Seattle Opera’s 2013 Bicentenary
Ring whilst 2013/14 plans include Minnie in La Fanciulla del West and
Brünnhilde in Götterdämmerung for Opera North.
After singing Doctor Yes in Anna Nicole at the Royal Opera House
(Michael White in the Telegraph wrote: “I particularly liked the breast
enhancement surgeon, gloriously sung by Andrew Rees”) Andrew has
been invited to return to Covent Garden to sing Eisslinger in Die
Meistersinger at the end of the year in addition to Froh in Der Ring in
2012. Following his performance as Eisslinger last year for Welsh
National Opera with Bryn Terfel he will be back with WNO in the
Autumn to take on the role of Kudrjas in Katja Kabanova. In the new
year he will be off to Tel Aviv to sing Steva in Jenufa.
With an already very successful career in the world of music theatre
which includes the release of two solo albums, Stuart Pendred made
an extraordinary decision to extend his abilities as an artist by joining
the Goodall Academy last summer. The meteoric progress which he has
made since then will enable him to sing the title role in Eugene Onegin
at Bearwood Opera in July. Having considered covering the role of
King Marke at Grange Park Opera he however took the advice of his
tutors Phillip Thomas and David Syrus to focus on his development in
the direction of heldenbariton.
At the Mastersingers weekend at Aldeburgh in May (see: centre pages)
Magdalen Ashman will be continuing the masterclasses which she
began last year with Dame Anne Evans and Sir John Tomlinson as an
inaugural member of the Goodall Academy. Later this year she will
sing Waltraute with Edinburgh Opera Players, Venus with the Northern
Wagner Orchestra and will audition before the Casting Director at the
Royal Opera House. She is planning a tour of Germany in the autumn.
– 40 –